Jon Ferry
Province
Despite all the self-righteous chatter about people in Metro Vancouver needing to get out of their SUVs and start riding bicycles or taking transit, the vast majority of folks who travel around our region daily still do so by motor vehicle.
The region’s outdated traffic-management system, meanwhile, guarantees that getting in and out of the city of Vancouver can sometimes be a nightmare.
So closing one or two lanes of the Burrard Street Bridge to auto traffic this summer, as Vancouver city council appears set to do, will likely simply compound the misery.
On the other hand, there is an outside chance this brave new experiment could prove a progressive step toward promoting an increasingly green city, as a majority of Vancouver councillors undoubtedly believe.
The travelling public will have six months to give it a thorough road test — unless, of course, a public outcry forces city hall to put a stop to it earlier, as it did during a similar six-month trial in 1996. That experiment lasted just a week.
Certainly, many of Vancouver‘s vocal bicycling advocates will applaud the latest lane exchange, which should make it easier for them to head downtown without having to share a narrow bridge sidewalk with pedestrians.
Whatever the outcome, though, I believe it’s high time bicycle riders in B.C. stopped getting a free ride and started paying their fair share of road taxes and other fees.
An annual bicycle-registration fee of, say, $50 would be a good start, with cyclists being required to display bicycle-identification plates.
This is not something I’ve suddenly dreamed up. I discussed it with Critical Mass riders over Christmas. And it’s been advanced by cyclists themselves as a way of funding badly needed new cycling lanes and routes.
It might also help end the bad blood with motorists, many of whom consider cyclists to be little better than freeloaders. And it could well encourage them to become more responsible road-users, by making it easier for police and others to identify rule-breakers.
Indeed, that’s one of the reasons given by Republican legislator Wayne Krieger of Oregon for proposing a bill that would require cyclists to register their bikes with the state, paying a fee of $54 US every two years. “Here in Salem, a lot of people are tired of how folks blatantly break laws on their bikes,” Krieger said in a BikePortland.org interview. “And I’m not talking about kids, I’m talking about adults. If they have a sticker then you know who it is and you have some way to track them down.”
However, Krieger’s taxation initiative has been called everything from stupid to just plain crazy. And an Associated Press story said the odds of Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski signing the bill appeared to be only slightly better than his chances of winning the Tour de France.
But is it really any madder than jamming up one of Vancouver‘s busiest bridges with motor-vehicle traffic in the height of our key tourist season? I think not.
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